Over the past few weeks The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust has experienced a major upheaval in the way it works following the Covid-19 outbreak.
New working conditions have had to be swiftly and robustly put in place with various systems and processes being altered drastically. Our IT and Information teams have been working around the clock, ensuring staff can effectively and safely continue to provide care for patients and service users in these unprecedented times. This means keeping thousands of staff members connected and able to work remotely as well as changing the way they communicate with each other through different digital means.
James Rawlinson (pictured), Director of Health Informatics, spoke about the importance of the role of the team and how they have utilised technology to its fullest.
“Within 24 to 48 hours of the government lockdown announcement, we had a sudden surge in people needing to work from home,” said James. “We’ve deployed hundreds of laptops, reconfigured PCs, stood up virtual desktop solutions and collaboration technology to more than 5,000 people who work at the Trust. We upgraded our internet fold to 1GB, with connection in two weeks as opposed to normally taking three to four months.
“We have created performance and dashboard reports so people can understand what is going on across the organisation. We are doing more with our electronic patient records as very suddenly we couldn’t rely on paper due to the infection control across ITU and HDU, or community e-Prescribing.”
Some of the work the team has undertaken, along with Chief Clinical Information Officer Richard Slater, has focused on providing IPads to enable communication between clinicians in various areas of the hospital. This has also enabled virtual ward rounds and hundreds of video patient consultations are now taking place with more being planned for wider deployment in dermatology, diabetes, care home teams, cardiology and TB.
Feedback from staff throughout this period of change has been positive. “Most of the tech we’ve deployed has always been there, such as Microsoft Teams, but staff now use it more than ever before,” said James. “There has generally been very, very positive feedback, both in terms of the service levels we provided and also how using the technology is helping to provide the care we need to give as well as keeping in touch.”
One of the features that has been useful is the Attend Anywhere app, which has seen a dramatic uptake in usage. The app is a web-based platform that helps health and social care providers offer video call. One staff review said: “The Attend Anywhere is very user friendly and easy to use especially for those of us that do not have many IT skills. The system is easy to use for the patient as well. We are hoping to start to use it much more, especially in the current situation, and it will also be an asset in the future when trying to engage with young people and people who struggle to get time off work for appointments.”
Looking to the future, the challenge for the Trust will be maintaining the current appetite for technology.
“On the whole the NHS is getting used to this new ‘normal’ and I hope it will maintain the acceptance of how technology and digitisation can be a positive change,” said James. “In addition, I’m not sure parts of our society will ever want us to ‘go back’ to old traditional ways of delivering healthcare. But we’re mindful that these sudden changes, especially around changes to clinical practice, such as video consultations, have been on what is a relatively small scale compared to normal services, and our challenge is how we maintain this at scale.”
Thinking of the wider picture across the region, the sense of collaboration and collegiate approaches across Rotherham and South Yorkshire has been brilliant. “In day two of the ‘crisis’ we gave up 50 of our ‘spare’ laptops to Doncaster Hospital because they had none,” said James. “Last week Sheffield Children’s Hospital handled the payment and delivery of more than 800 laptops across South Yorkshire, while Rotherham CCG donated 50 of their spare new laptops. Suppliers and the community have been falling over themselves to help, and I hope it continues.”
